Jacqueline du Pré Biography
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The tragedy of du Pré’s brief career is still fresh in the public memory and can be summarized here. She was born in Oxford on 26 January 1945 into a middle–class family in which music was important: her mother was a fine pianist and a gifted teacher. The French–sounding name came from her father’s Channel Islands ancestry. Just before her fifth birthday, when she was already showing musical promise, she heard the sound of a cello on the radio and the course of her life was set. She studied at Herbert Walenn’s London Violoncello School and at ten became a pupil of William Pleeth, who had himself studied with Julius Klengel. Pleeth played with a good deal of uninhibited body movement and passed this trait on to du Pré, whose total physical involvement... read more EMI Classics |
